Harry Potter and the Roasted Bankers

This weekend, seeking a bit of refuge from the endless political theater of the manufactured debt crisis, I took my entire family to see the final Harry Potter movie. We had agreed to wait until we could all go see it together. I started out reading the first couple of books to my kids when they were little, and with my younger son heading for college in a few weeks, seeing the movie represented a sense of closure.

Yet even though I’d read the book a couple of years ago, I was struck by how the bankers at Gringotts, the wizarding bank, were portrayed. Sure, they’re goblins. One is particularly treacherous. But they also enslave and torture a dragon to keep interlopers out of the bank’s vaults. When Harry and his companions make their escape, the dragon is unleashed, spewing fire and mayhem and roasting or trampling every banker in sight.

Perhaps its a convenient plot device, but I couldn’t help but wonder if author J.K. Rowling wasn’t perhaps working in a bit of social commentary. The last book, after all, was published a year after the global financial crisis, and Rowling faced financial struggles of her own before the Potter series made her wealthier than a gold-hoarding goblin.

Either way, it’s telling that bankers’ reputation isn’t any better in the wizarding world than it is among us Muggles.